Sweden – Aftonbladet, June 28, 2025
The risk is high that imprisoned Ahmadreza Djalali may soon be executed.
Now Karolinska Institutet (KI) is increasing pressure on the Swedish government to bring home their former colleague.
“I am very worried,” says Rector Annika Östman Wernerson.
The Swedish-Iranian KI researcher Ahmadreza Djalali has been under a death sentence in Evin Prison in Iran for nine years.
He was recently moved away from his fellow inmates to an unknown location—something that has caused deep fear that his sentence may soon be carried out.
“I’m very concerned about the signals we’ve received over the past week. That he’s been removed and we haven’t heard anything from him. And we’ve learned that at least six prisoners who were sentenced for the same reasons as Djalali have been executed in the past week,” says Annika Östman Wernerson, Rector of Karolinska Institutet.
Concern for a colleague
On Thursday, she sent a letter to Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard, urging the minister and the Swedish government to “significantly increase their efforts.”
“Primarily, of course, to prevent the execution of this death sentence. But we also want him to be released and reunited with his family here in Sweden.”
